Washington: Twitter users searching for the word “loser” have been getting Donald Trump as their top result. The platform denied that this was intentional, saying that it’s how its search tools work.
Trump began popping up as a “loser” in Twitter after his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, declared victory in the US presidential election. Biden’s Twitter handle has become the top search result for “winner” on the platform. Twitter denied speculation that this was a kind of ‘Easter egg’ planted by the company, which conservatives have long accused of bias and perceived sympathy towards Democrats.
Twitter’s search results are automatically generated based on how people are using the terms in their tweets at a certain time, the company said in a statement. “If an account is mentioned often alongside certain terms, they can become algorithmically surfaced together as an association. These associations are temporal and ever changing based on how people tweet,” the statement read.
Twitter has been slapping “disclaimers” on tweets regarding the outcome of the election. However, while it added a warning to Trump’s tweet, in which he claimed he won the election, Biden’s tweet saying he was “honored” that Americans had chosen him, did not get the same treatment.
Post Your Comments